


you should see me in a crown

by rizahawkaye



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Drama, F/F, First Kiss, Gayyyyyyy, Mutual Pining, Pining, Politics, Romance, Sexism, Slow Burn, Women Being Awesome, Women in the Military, not like romantic drama but sexism drama ya feel, sexism in the military yo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-03-08 07:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18889555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rizahawkaye/pseuds/rizahawkaye
Summary: Olivier meets Riza Hawkeye. And then she meets her again. And again. And over time, through the years, she forms a bond which is so unfamiliar yet feels exactly like every home she's never had. [Basically, an Olivier character exploration/study with a dab of romance with Riza because I can do that.]





	1. 1909

**Author's Note:**

> hewwo this is for mossarts over on Tumblr <3

**Central Amestris, 1909**

God, the coffee tasted like shit. The air was infected with humidity, a noxious blend of gasses, the bitter stench of oil. Olivier’s curls kept curling in all the wrong places. There was a permanent sheen of sweat around the curve of her neck, the sharp line of her collar bones, and the chasm between her breasts. She kept shifting on her feet trying to find comfortable footing on the thick, plush rugs in every general’s office. If only these posh Central pups could learn to appreciate the solid, sturdy surface that is concrete and steel then maybe the sides of Olivier’s boots wouldn’t be digging into her ankles.

The whole day was meeting after meeting. Old man after old man. Raven, Hakuro, Grumman, Bradley. Then they’d mix it up and it’d become Hakuro, Grumman, Bradley, Raven. Grumman, Raven, Hakuro, Bradley. So on and so fucking forth.

All the offices looked the same, smelled the same, came with the same condescending man with wandering eyes and a deep, stone-on-stone rasp. Olivier wanted to crawl out of her own skin. If these things weren’t annual — mandatory! — she wouldn’t be here. She’d be behind her desk at Briggs, the cold biting into her bones. She’d been in Central for less than forty-eight hours and she missed her ice, her blinding snow. Her father had already come calling for her, asking that she pay him and her mother a visit. She didn’t want to but she probably would, even if Alex would be there. It meant caffeine that lived up to her expectations. It meant granite floors and fine hardwood and marble pillars. No fluffy rugs.

Lunch was hard boiled eggs and ham sandwiches served with a side of vegetable soup Olivier wanted to chuck out the window. She had looked forward to lunch because it meant she would get a break from the crusty old turds she’s listened to for the past day-and-a-half, but Fuhrer Bradley was hell-bent on keeping negotiations going. They talked all through their foul smelling eggs and toasted bread. General Hakuro had apparently never been taught to chew with his mouth closed. General Grumman had clearly never used a napkin. Olivier made it a point of doing both, if only to cue them in on normal human etiquette.

Although it wasn’t as if Olivier even knew what “normal human” meant — what it was. She was raised as a rich brat, the daughter of a famous trader who had a habit of slipping thousands of cenz into the pockets of the very men smacking their food in the fuhrer’s personal break room. She’d grown up in gowns and attending etiquette lessons and drinking bergamot tea with men who wanted to win her parent’s graces… And sometimes with men who were more keen on winning hers.

It was a quarter past four when Lieutenant Colonel Roy Mustang joined the fray. A cheeky brat. A strategist, Olivier could see it in his sharp, tilted eyes. He settled at the wrong end of the table as Bradley opened their meeting up to talk of Aerugo and had to be quietly ushered to the very end by a generous Grumman. If it had been up to Olivier she would have let the young man make a fool of himself, if only for a few more minutes.

This was not Olivier’s most favored activity. She was the only woman in a stuffy room of men. She could open her mouth to make a statement, have an opinion, and it didn’t matter how loudly she spoke — they’d hear her about as well as they heard the newcomer Mustang. Who, she lamented, they at least looked in the eye as he spoke. 

This was a table of wrinkles and grey streaks. Four walls kept them and their discussions contained (something about weapons in Aerugat, something about the number of dead in Ishval), three decorated with cartoonishly large green flags, all bearing the country’s mark. The table was a thick cut of mahogany, each arch of each chair held together with gold colored bolts and upholstered with a rich brown leather. It reminded Olivier of all the keen suitors and their untouched houses, the dust motes floating in the space just at eye level, the plastic coverings over the sofas. She imagined this table and its occupants covered in white sheets and preserved until the time of year came for them to be wound up once more; dusted off and made to be some semblance of functional again. “It’s time to unearth the foyer!” she heard her childhood maid’s voice at the back of her head, echoing.

And then Olivier’s thoughts went to her parents, their achingly large mansion, their son and his sorry mustache and weak eyes.

The higher ups wrapped up their discussions by five on the dot. General Raven touched his hand to Olivier’s back, guiding her toward the hall as the group dispersed and fizzled into small talk. “Thank you for your time, Major General Armstrong. I know from personal experience how terribly long the trek from the north is.”

Olivier stepped carefully out of the general’s touch. “It would have been a more fruitful meeting, General Raven, if I’d managed to feel a bit more heard than seen.”

It was a risky thing to say, no doubt. Olivier was taught to hold her tongue — quite literally. Her nannies would instruct her to pinch her tongue between her fingers if she ever made a clever quip as a child. Perhaps that’s why she did it so often now, as a general in Amestris’ military. But General Raven could no more make Olivier physically hold her tongue than he could fuck her over his desk, and so he smiled instead. Relented. Daydreamed. The skin around his lips was thin and cracking even in this sticky wet air. Olivier wanted to scream or kill something or both.

General Raven’s face broke into a toothy grin. His eyes focused beyond Olivier and she turned to see a soldier at her shoulder. “Second Lieutenant Hawkeye,” he said, his tone going sickly sweet.

“General Raven,” Lieutenant Hawkeye saluted him before turning her salute on Olivier. “Brigadier General Armstrong,” she said. Her voice was cool like the snow mists, though her eyes were warm, amber as liquor. Her name was familiar, but Olivier couldn’t place her face. Was it joint training? Was she a soldier at Briggs once upon a time? Olivier was good with matching faces to names and names to faces, but the intelligent eyes in front of her were both alluring and evading. “I wanted to extend Lieutenant Colonel Mustang’s thanks for such a prestigious invitation.”

Olivier couldn’t help herself. “And where is that colonel now, Lieutenant Hawkeye? If he is so thankful I’d like to hear it from him, especially after he couldn’t bother to understand his seating arrangement before walking through the door.”

General Raven coughed a laugh into his fist. Anger — or was it frustration? — flashed over Lieutenant Hawkeye’s face.

It was gone too quickly for Olivier to tell. 

“He was called upon by General Grumman, sir,” the lieutenant answered. She had pretty lips, Olivier mused. A finely cut jaw. Her nose sloped at just the right angle.

“Very well,” Olivier said. Her tone was dismissive and so the second lieutenant left them with a polite bow. Olivier watched the woman go.

“Riza Hawkeye,” Raven said. “She was pulled from the academy early to fight in the civil war.”

Olivier hummed. “How early?”

“She was half a year from finishing her training. She is a gifted sniper.”

Half a year. And if Olivier was to believe that Lieutenant Hawkeye joined the academy at eighteen then that would put her at close to twenty-one now. Those amber eyes on the battlefield, before she’d even had a proper graduation? Olivier hadn’t fought that war but she’d heard stories. She’d saved soldiers from it, their lives ripped apart, their allegiances strained. Just today she’d listened to Bradley speak to the brilliance of his Flame Alchemist, a man who burned people alive. Olivier prided herself on having no soft spots, but the idea of a ripe young soldier braving the blood-coated sands, breathing in the scent of singed flesh made her stomach do an uncharacteristic flip.

“Shall we mingle, General Armstrong?” Raven’s hand was on her again, attempting to guide her by the elbow. Disgust rattled Olivier’s insides. “I’ll be sure you’re heard,” he whispered against her ear.

The implications were not lost on Olivier but she wouldn’t let herself be bothered. It didn’t matter how many men she was surrounded by or how many wanted her — she’d learned long ago how to navigate such a world, and she was learning now how to dominate it.  _ Besides _ , she thought as she let Raven steer her into a conversation about railways in the north,  _ all I can think about is amber eyes behind a dusty scope _ .


	2. 1909.2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this update took so long. i've had a busy few weeks, but i hope you guys enjoy my shameless soft!Oliviza content <3

**Eastern Amestris, 1909**

The foyers of men smelled faintly of cigar smoke and sporty cologne. Of dust on old books. Of faded ink and postal stamps. A man once asked Olivier to lick an envelope closed for him and she had, and then she spit on his Brogues. It was worth the slap she got from her nanny, the endless _How insufferable how ungrateful how disrespectful your father is going to hear about this, young lady, yes he is_ _and then you’ll be sorry for doing that to Mr. Pyles, yes you will_. But Olivier had never been sorry for anything. Not harsh words or shredded dresses; not deep scowls or the Brogues of an older man who wanted to marry her, a thirteen-year-old. She studied the bruise in the mirror that night, the purpling circle below her cheekbone where her nanny had hit her. It was ringed by red and tender to touch. It was a battle wound, one of many.

Olivier found the nearest tent to kick her boots into. She tore the left one off with her right foot, and then she slumped into a chair to wrestle the right boot away. They leaned on one another in the shifting sands, grain spilling from the tops of them as wind came through the tent. The heat in the east was otherworldly, indescribable, close to unbearable. Diffuse sunlight seeped through the tent’s pores, forcing more sweat to Olivier’s skin. Her neck felt damp where her thick blonde hair rested at the nape. The flesh of her cheek throbbed and pulsed.

Each beat of Olivier’s heart brought an ache with it.  _ Thump _ , Mr. Pyles lived out east. He had sixteen acres and four horses, and a cart scented with manure and painted an obnoxious orange.  _ Thump _ , his house was technically four stories, as he’d put it, because there was a balcony on the roof and the attic was its own floor. Olivier remembered leaning over the balcony railing, the painted curve of the rail smooth and slick beneath her hands.  _ Thump _ , she’d spotted her father talking amiably with a courier, Mr. Pyles in his pressed suit beside him, the courier’s horse picking at the courier’s hair. It was red, curly, and touched his shoulders. Possibly the horse thought it was an apple, or possibly the horse didn’t like Mr. Pyles and wanted to leave.

Someone stumbled into the tent and broke apart Olivier’s pointless dwellings. Her head snapped to attention, but her body stayed rooted to the chair.

“Oh, Brigadier General Armstrong,” Second Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye wandered in cautious, like a mouse rounding a sleeping cat, “I apologize for intruding, sir.” She said so but she didn’t leave. She stood with her back to the tent opening, her hands working it closed. She had dirt smeared over her chin and nose, beads of sweat on her brow, a rifle slung over her back. At her hip, a black pistol.

“Is there something you need, Lieutenant Hawkeye?”

Hawkeye eyed the water canister on the seat adjacent to Olivier, and it was only then that Olivier remembered this was the water station tent, the I-don’t-want-to-die-of-heat-syncope-in-this-Godforsaken-region tent. She handed the canister to the lieutenant, who drank deep and long before settling into the seat beside her general. 

They sat in comfortable silence as they passed the canister back and forth. People shouted at one another outside the tent. Boots shuffled over the rocky, sandy ground. Rifles popped, dust blew. Lieutenant Hawkeye began cleaning her rifle, threading cloth through the barrel. Her wheat bangs fell over her eyes as she worked, and Olivier watched a line of moisture draw itself down the lieutenant's temple until she spoke. “If you don’t mind my saying so, sir,” she said, her attention never leaving the task at hand, “you should put a cool wash rag over your face. Some ice, maybe. It’s already starting to bruise.”

Olivier felt all at once warm and defensive. “Why do you care if it bruises, Lieutenant Hawkeye?” She spat the words but Hawkeye didn’t budge, didn’t even flinch. Olivier spied scars over the lieutenant’s hands, her own blueish blemish on the corner where her jaw met her ear. 

“I won’t care if you don’t want me to, sir.”

Olivier’s nanny found her in the bathroom that evening, looking at the constellation of blues and blacks and purples on her face, staring into the mirror. “Ice it, child,” her nanny had hissed, and took Olivier’s face in her rough hand. She turned Olivier’s head this way and that, making the area sting. “You don’t do careless things if you don’t want the consequences, Miss Armstrong. You’ll never find a husband that way.”

_ I don’t want a husband I don’t want a husband I don’t want a husband. _

“Do as you wish, Lieutenant Hawkeye.”

“All right, sir,” Hawkeye said. She took a clean cloth from her pocket, poured some water from the canister onto it, and held it out to Olivier. Water dripped from the soaking cloth onto the sand, plotting it with dark spots. Riza Hawkeye’s sticky, liquor eyes flickered in the light. Inviting. But Olivier took too long to retrieve the cloth, and so Hawkeye touched it to Olivier’s cheek herself. She held it there for a couple seconds, the sounds outside the tent lulling, hiding behind the roar of blood in Olivier’s ears, the easy, steady rhythm of Lieutenant Hawkeye’s breaths. Their gazes latched together like a lock. 

“How’d it happen, sir?” Hawkeye asked, and scooted closer. She was gentle as she dabbed at the sensitive flesh. 

Olivier’s first instinct was to say  _ Mr. Pyles _ and that caught her off-guard. Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye caught her off-guard. 

“A cadet barreled into me during training earlier this afternoon. His bony chin landed right into my face. It’s no surprise he was an eastern fawn.”

Second Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye laughed — she actually laughed. It came more from her throat than her belly so it was soft and airy. Cottony and light. Olivier wanted to chase the sound, though she couldn’t fathom why. 

“I’ll bet he was scrambling to disappear afterward, sir.”

Olivier smiled. “Indeed.”


	3. 1892.1910

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't know if they'll actually kiss in this mini-fic, but i do know that Olivier will daydream about it.

**North City, 1892**

Olivier was sixteen when she visited the northern mountains for the first time. Her father had business with the military there, something about a loan or “imminent domain,” and she’d gone along with him because her mother and her brother and her nannies wouldn’t. It would be her and her dad and her freedom, and no one and nothing else. 

The first thing Olivier noticed about the north was the peculiar way in which women dressed. Although, if you considered the snow, it wasn’t all that peculiar. To Olivier, though, it was downright alien. The women weren’t wearing dresses or skirts but slacks, the ends of them tucked into thick rubber boots scuffed and marred by the icy ground. They wore jackets with collars that puffed up around their heads like manes. They wore layers and no jewelry; fat gloves and fuzz-ridden plaid long sleeves. They looked like queens out on the ice, their hoods haloed around their heads, sun rays caught between the pieces of white fur. 

It was on a day when Olivier’s father had business at the wall that Olivier ventured into town on her own. She’d been surprised to realize how easy it was to slip away from her father, who gave her one long, exasperated look but didn’t voice his disapproval. He didn’t have the stomach to argue with her the way her nannies — or her mother — did. No, her father was a mesh of ambivalence and swift justice. She understood that he was letting her go, but also knew that there would be trouble if she didn’t return before dark. Which, Olivier realized, was more a rule of habit than one that would properly keep her safe. Because for one the north was not Central. The only cars Olivier saw here were military-issued, and the men’s arms were all too full of pelts and meats and buckets of boiling water and children and horse’s reins to be of any threat to Olivier. There was no black exhaust filling space in the sky, and there were no screaming girlfriends or windows full of glittering necklaces. There was only the open, blue sky and the grey-and-white mountains that broke it apart. 

So, sixteen and in a region as cold and sharp as her, Olivier ventured. She ventured past windowless shops, houses with smoke rising steadily from their chimneys, heavily-clothed children drawing hopscotch lines on the ice-crusted stone pathways, about a dozen or so snowmen, and only stopped when she came upon a bar. She pulled her admittedly too thin coat tighter over her frame, her breath misting in her vision, and stepped up to the bar’s front door, close enough that she fogged the glass. She peered inside. There were only as many patrons as Olivier could count on one hand, and three were older-looking and hunched men while two were younger, bright eyed women. Olivier couldn’t know why, especially at that moment, she wanted desperately to be inside this bar. But she let herself in. 

It smelled like her father’s wine cellar, only less cigar-y and more cigarette-y, which Olivier didn’t appreciate but didn’t complain about, either. She wandered a few steps into the bar when the bartender asked, “You old enough for a place like this?” 

Olivier was halfway done removing her coat. She felt her face get hot not because the bartender had questioned her presence but because all six sets of eyes in the bar were trained on her. She draped her coat over the chair beside one of the women and sat down, decidedly indignant. “Yes,” she lied. Who was going to check?

The bartender shrugged and went about his own business again. 

“We’re not old enough, either.” One of the girls at the table leaned in and whispered. Her breath smelled sweet like she’d been drinking something fruity in the light of this cloudless day. Her lips were smoothed by a gloss, and her blouse was undone to the middle of her sternum. Olivier could see down her shirt when she leaned over the table. She swept her deep, dark hair over her shoulder. “We’re skipping classes today.”

The other girl — a thin, long, less endowed girl — bumped her shoulder to Olivier’s. “What brings you here?”

Olivier didn’t know what brought her to the bar. She couldn’t exactly tell them she’d been drawn in by an unseen force, so she said, “My father does work with the military up at Briggs.” 

“Oh?” The busty girl asked, and lit a cigarette. She offered a puff to Olivier but Olivier declined. Cigarettes were horrid things and the smoke from them always seared the inside of Olivier’s nose. “What kind of work?”

_ We own six-hundred acres of private land that the military wants to build secure forts and training grounds on for the ongoing fight with Drachma and my father would rather preserve his property.  _

“I only know that he sells things.”

The rest of the afternoon was more questions and hushed discussion. Mostly it was about the military, whether Olivier liked it, whether her father liked it, what kinds of things Olivier has seen. Sometimes the girls wanted to know about Central. What the culture was like in such a large city, how the schools worked, what it was like to drive a car. Finally, the thin girl asked, “Do you have a boyfriend, Olivier? A pretty Central boy?” She was a quarter of the way through her second cigarette, and she let smoke flow from her mouth as she spoke. 

Olivier thought of the grown men and their offers; she thought of the boys her age. She remembered the other girl’s blouse, open, the hills of her breasts escaping. She said, “Boys aren’t really my thing at the moment.” 

Later, when Olivier and the two girls left the bar, the thin one led Olivier into the space between the bar and another building while the busty girl kept watch. She kissed Olivier as she eased her back against the chilled brick. And despite the years of turning away from wealthy men, of not once leering at a shirtless boy running wild in the summer heat, Olivier never understood until now. The girl tasted like alcohol and cigarettes, but she was so authentic, and Olivier felt so authentic, that none of that bothered her. The cold world was a hush.

**North City, 1910**

Roy Mustang entered the bar looking like more of an idiot than Olivier could have ever dreamed. He was dressed in his royal blues and a greatcoat, and that was all. He came in rubbing his gloved hands together in front of his mouth, blowing hot air from his belly onto them. It wouldn’t do him any good. The bar was as cold as it was outside, and if it were so easy to keep warm with friction and tepid stomach air then none of Olivier’s men would ever suffer frostbite. 

“You’re late,” she snapped. He slid his hands into his pockets and assumed that aggravating, nonchalant, I-don’t-give-an-actual-fuck slumped posture of his. An easy smile slid across his face and Olivier thought for one blissful moment about punching it off of him. 

“The lieutenant was having a hard time driving in the snow.”

Roy Mustang stepped aside and swept his hand in the direction of Lieutenant Hawkeye, dressed in her blues but kept comfortably warm by a hooded jacket. Her cheeks were stained pink from the cold, and rivulets of water dripped from the tips of her fringe. Her gaze lingered on Olivier’s for longer than was necessary, and Olivier sensed that the two of them were imagining their last encounter. 

“Hello, Second Lieutenant Hawkeye,” Olivier said. She was formal where she wished she didn’t need to be. 

“Glad to see you again, General Armstrong.”

Lieutenant Hawkeye took the seat to Olivier’s left. Roy wandered off toward the bar to order something that would surely render him loose-lipped and unbearable for an already dreaded discussion about northern protocol during joint training. The lieutenant cleared her throat in the silence that followed Roy’s absence. She said, “I wanted to apologize for my behavior, sir.”

Olivier was genuinely confused. “You’ve only just gotten here, Lieutenant. What could you possibly have done that requires an apology?”

Lieutenant Hawkeye shook her head. “I’m talking about the tent, sir. Out east. I should have never,” and here her cheeks grew more pink, or perhaps that was Olivier’s wishful thinking, “crossed a boundary, sir.”

It came rushing at Olivier like the tide. Riza Hawkeye, pushed up against that brick wall in the space between buildings, Roy Mustang keeping watch, Olivier’s lips trailing kisses down the lieutenant’s jaw, her throat. 

And then it was gone. 

“No boundaries were crossed, Lieutenant,” Olivier said in earnest. Then she surprised herself: “I’m not sure you could cross a boundary with me if you tried.”

Lieutenant Hawkeye was stunned, then opened her mouth to respond, then her colonel returned.    
  



	4. 1914

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm soft(tm)

The snow storm beat a discordant song against all sides of the Wall. Sometimes Olivier wondered if that was all the north could offer her, if that was all the snow could do. It pounded away like a toddler on a piano, unbothered by their own mismanaging of keys and the audience that snickered and cooed. No one cooed at the fast-moving snow in Briggs, and if you snickered it was likely because you were dying, but the point remained. 

Olivier rolled over and remembered quite suddenly that she’d invited a woman into her bed. Olive-toned with chestnut hair, the woman’s eyes soaked up all of the darkness and became pits of inky black. But even still Olivier could see the woman’s lashes flick over the crest of her cheeks. Eventually, as Olivier watched, the woman’s face split into a smile, lazy and smooth. She spoke with a heavy Aerugonian accent.

“You are awake,” she said. A bony hand curled hair over the curve of Olivier’s ear and out of her face. 

“I don’t remember your name,” Olivier said, unashamed. No one should expect her to remember much in the north, where tensions were high enough to scrub out all the leftover space in Olivier’s mind. She had room for Drachma, for Miles, and not much else, although her mind liked to whisper in the quiet about Riza Hawkeye.

Riza Hawkeye — Central — Roy Mustang — the man they’ve named Scar.

“Elena,” the woman said without a hint of aggravation. Of course a general wouldn’t remember her name, she’d never expected anything else. 

“Elena,” even the name tasted pretty on Olivier’s tongue, “what time is it?”

Elena bent her head to check the clock on Olivier’s bedside table. “Early enough that the morning is still the night.” Her hand then slid down Olivier’s torso, ghosted over her inner thighs. Olivier shifted on the bed, her mind filling with heat and with the memory of hours prior. Elena must be a pro, Olivier thought, a natural. “Which is to say, General Armstrong, that we have more than enough time to—”

_ Riza Hawkeye — Central — Roy Mustang — the man they’ve named Scar. _

“I should be getting back to my work, Elena.” Olivier stole Elena’s wrist, stilling her ministrations. She could tell that she’d put the woman off. Elena’s bottom lip jutted out like a scolded child’s. It took all of Olivier’s carefully manicured restraint to get dressed as Elena did, the sheets falling from her form to reveal perfect breasts and meaty hips. But she said goodbye to Elena in the hall where the snow was its loudest and asked that Miles (who had been standing outside Olivier’s door waiting to be called upon) have Elena chartered safely back to North City. Olivier went away when the two of them were gone.

Olivier’s office was cold and unwelcoming. The lights were still on, evidence that Miles had known she’d be returning before the sun came up, and when she sat in her chair it took her body a few seconds to adjust to the icy leather. Briggs had no heating system — things were either chilly or freezing, depending on the state of the weather. Tonight, it was freezing. Olivier’s breath did little dances in her vision, misting from her mouth like smoke from a dragon’s nostrils. She glanced at the clock on her wall: 0300. It would be too early to call now, surely no one would answer, but Olivier picked up the phone and dialed anyway, spurred by her own damned anxiety. 

The line rang, a pleasant sounding woman answered, Olivier gave her her code, and she was patched through. The line rang again. It rang, rang, rang. Olivier gripped the phone so tightly her knuckles were going white, but the news was on a reel in her mind: Scar, killing state alchemists and their guards. Killing anyone who opposed him. Attacking children in the streets. Her guts leapt.

“Hello, this is Colonel Mustang’s office.”

Olivier had gotten over this ability of Riza Hawkeye’s to make her heart go wild as a stallion. It no longer drove her mad. It no longer sent her into a dizzying spiral of uncertainty; of not knowing what version of herself she would be when in the lieutenant’s presence. The sound of her voice over the phone — sizzling as the snow storm fumbled the connection — was enough to make Olivier forget Elena, forget the cold, forget the fear for a moment. And fear was such a strange emotion for Olivier, because what did the queen of the north have to fucking fear? 

Losing Riza Hawkeye, apparently.

“Lieutenant Hawkeye,” Olivier intoned in her deep, solid way, “it’s late.”

There was silence on the other line. It stretched on long enough that Olivier thought maybe the storm had taken the connection entirely, but finally the lieutenant’s voice came through. “We’re running a bit behind, sir. I’m sure you’ve heard of Scar.”

Olivier had heard too much of Scar. “Yes,” she said. 

“He’s escaped and we’re concerned for the safety of Central’s state alchemists. I volunteered to go over case files, but there are so many that it’s taken me quite a long while.”

Olivier settled into her chair. “How much more do you have to do?”

There was rustling on the other end of the line. “I have six files left, sir.”

“Go over them with me.”

“Sir?”

“Read them to me, Lieutenant Hawkeye. I’ll stay on the line with you until you’re through, and then I’ll order whoever I need to order to take you home.”

Silence again, and then a quiet, “Thank you.”


	5. 1882.1919

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god i love these two so much. so much.

**Central Amestris, 1882**

 

Olivier was six when her tutor told her about the snow. 

“Where is my father?” she said in that way she did that made her sound older than she actually was. Most young girls called their fathers  _ papa  _ or  _ daddy _ , but not Olivier. Not the child with ice for eyes. Even at six she was impossibly formal, much to her own dismay. Children want to be children, after all. 

“In the northern region, I believe.” The tutor said. She was a stout old woman with sagging breasts and see-through skin. Olivier often saw little blemishes on it, like cuts made that would never heal. They reopened and bled a bit sometimes, and the tutor would have to excuse herself to the washroom to dab the blood away. 

“Why is he in the north?” Olivier asked. She wasn’t genuinely interested in what her father was doing — only in distracting her very old tutor. The tutor seemed to know Olivier’s game, because she tapped the worksheet in front of Olivier and said, “Enough for now, young Armstrong. Give me six sentences in your prettiest cursive, please. One for every year you’ve been born.”

Olivier puffed out her cheeks. She wanted her tongue to puff out too, but the thought of being reprimanded for it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand at attention. Her brother Alex could do whatever he pleased, be it pulling his pants down and run naked and wild in the halls, or pick his nose and smear it on the coffee tables. And it isn’t like Olivier wanted to do either of those things, but she was suffocated while he was not; expectations were saddled with her while not with him; she only wanted the freedom to stick her tongue out at her tutor once in a while. 

“What should I write?” she asked, taking the pencil from the tutor’s wrinkly fingers. 

The tutor sat back in her chair, thinking. They were seated together at the long dining table in the long, colorful dining room. On the wall to Olivier’s right were half a dozen red-brown ornate chests and cabinets blazoned with crystals — crystal wine glasses, crystal pitchers, crystal plates, and even the glass over the cabinets were made of a prettier kind of glass, one that shimmered and threw fractured light over the marble floors. The dining table was set and decorated like it expected to house guests, and normally it did, but with Father being away there was no one with any reason to come to the Armstrong mansion. Yet the dining table remained set and primed anyway, awaiting to be of use. Overturned cups on sea green napkins, silver knives and spoons and forks bracketing light-pink-almost-white porcelain plates, a soft green table cover that reached from one end of the dining table to the other and almost touched the floor on both sides. To the left, a wall made of windows that overlooked the gardens. Sunlight sprang into the dining room, casting pillars of light in Olivier’s vision and catching dust motes as they tumbled along aimlessly in the air. Olivier peeked and saw Mr. Harshaw working at a hedge in the center of the gardens, brow furrowed, sweat dripping off his ears. 

“How about, ‘The snow will lick your wounds.’” 

Olivier had almost forgotten what she was doing. “The snow will do what?” she said. 

“It will lick your wounds, dear. Write it.”

Olivier didn’t know what that meant, but she wrote it. Her cursive was still sloppy, her hands not yet accustomed or available for such fine control, but she managed to complete the first sentence in a series of swirls. Mr. Harshaw was gone by the time she was through, probably off to tend to some bed of roses or water a lemon tree. The tutor clicked her tongue against the top of her mouth three times.  _ Tck tck tck. _

“Try again,” she said. 

Olivier did.  _ The snow will lick your wounds. _

And again:  _ The snow will lick your wounds. _

After the fourth time, Olivier inquired, “What does that mean?”

“Cold can be a remedy for something achy or hot. When you hurt, you can sometimes use ice to make it feel better.”

Olivier’s nose bunched at its base. “But that’s ice, and this is snow.”

“Two sides of the same coin, dear Armstrong.”

“Ice and snow are the same?” Olivier said. She finished her sentence with a flourish, and while she felt particularly proud of this one, the tutor shook her head, eyes closing then opening again slowly. 

“Two more times,” she said, and then: “Ice is frozen water, and snow is formed when water vapor freezes in the air. When that happens, little pinpricks of ice come together around dirt and dust and make snowflakes, which then rain down on us and coat our world in white.” The tutor picked up a neighboring glass and twisted it this way and that in the sunlight, casting little dots of light down over the tabletop, attempting to emulate the erratic yet pretty fluttering of snow. “Well, in some regions of the world anyway. Here in Central we are plagued by the heat almost year-round.” 

Olivier was entranced by the dancing light from the glass. Did snow really look like that when it fell? If so, Olivier imagined standing under a snow fall, being engulfed by tiny, glittering cold stars. “Where does it snow?” she said. 

The tutor quit playing with the glass. “Up north, my dear. Now finish your sentences.”

 

**Briggs, 1919**

 

She found Riza Hawkeye on the outer rim of the wall. Olivier hadn’t been looking for her, not consciously anyway, but she felt rather triumphant when she spied the captain leaning over the rail and into the beat of snow fall, like she’d won a prize everyone sought after. 

She approached Captain Hawkeye, her heart playing a little song against her ribcage, and settled on the rail as well. The north was a biting cold; unrelenting, uncompromising in its quest to freeze and ice and, in some unfortunate cases, maim. But occasionally — and Olivier was sure that it was very occasional — walking the wall under the sun in layers of fur and cotton will, inevitably, get warm. And snow in the dead of the day felt good on heated skin, like salve over a wound.

They stood in silence, as that was their speciality. Riza Hawkeye came all this way to support her general in his negotiations about government seatings and all those things Olivier cared less and less for as the years wore on. And, Olivier suspected, Roy Mustang wanted to suss out whether or not Olivier would be vying for the führer’s soon-to-be vacant spot, which she hadn’t decided yet. Would she sit at that throne? Would she play keeper for a country that only a few years ago called her a traitor in her own streets? Border situations had improved only marginally, and Drachma and Aerugo were polishing their fangs, sharpening their claws, waiting mercilessly to take advantage of one of Amestris’s trademark slip-ups. 

No, perhaps Olivier would not want for that seat. But it didn’t hurt to make Mustang sweat a bit over it. 

“I like the cold,” Hawkeye said suddenly. Her voice was torn away by the wind, but it’s like Olivier heard it whispered into her ear. 

“I do too,” Olivier said. She thought about telling Riza Hawkeye what her tutor had told her all those years ago, but wondered if it could be considered rude to assume Hawkeye didn’t have that knowledge. Now that she was a proper, formal adult, it seemed everyone knew the secret of snow. 

“Would you ever live some place that wasn’t freezing, sir?” Hawkeye asked. She was stuck observing the clouds as they passed over North City, as they crawled and swirled and frothed at the blue sky, and then slid her gaze to Olivier’s. Even here, even in the impossible cold, Riza Hawkeye’s eyes were piercing, heated. 

The mountains were exceptionally white today. Their peaks were capped in snow, their ridges lined with it, their bases green with white ribbons. They were monstrous, sure, and they were dangerous, but they were, above all else, beautiful. Olivier moved closer to the captain, her throat swelling with nerves or anticipation or — probably — both. She’d never had a reason to think of living anywhere else but Briggs and the north. She had no answer for Captain Hawkeye. But she found her way into the captain’s carefully-guarded space, and once she was there she cupped one side of the captain’s face in her gloved hand. It was like she could feel the movement of the earth in that touch, like Riza’s blood flowing beneath her fingers was palpable, measurable, like Olivier could bottle all that life up and keep it safe, with her, forever. She dipped her head. 

By now the captain’s breathing had withered away into near-nothingness. Her neck was taught, that scar over the curve of it pulling tightly against her skin, going white as the snow. Olivier remembered, all at once, that she was a general, and Riza was a captain. She said, “This is not an order, Captain Hawkeye.”

It was Riza who brought their lips together. 

This kiss was gentle, not chaste. It was slow, deliberate, and warm. So warm. 

Riza tasted like honeyed tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU so much for readings, guys! i plan to write more oliviza in the future, i just can't get enough of them. the possibilities are endless ;;

**Author's Note:**

> if y'all could leave kudos and/or comments that would truly make my day (':


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